Twitter Implant becomes a Reality

You all probably know the ‘Twitter implant‘ from the Nano Supermarket. Scientist at the University of Princeton now created the first working prototype.

The implant is actually a sensor which could be tattooed on a tooth. The tattoo could diagnose an infection and transmit that information to a medic. This would be useful for military personnel to determine wether or not a wound becomes infectious.

Although the tattoo does not exactly twitter your coffee intake, it is a big step in monitoring over distance. I wonder which Nano Supermarket product would be next to become reality?

Via Gizmodo

Cellphone Masts Disguised as Trees are Outdated

There is a new version of the well-known cellphone masts disguised as trees. Instead of adding fake nature to these masts, ChamTech Operations wants to put a layer of invisible technology onto nature, therefore keeping it “authentic”.

The small company developed a special nano particle mix spray which turns trees into high-powered antennas, a nice addition to the ‘Streetlight Trees‘.  The spray also works for enhancing the strength of current antennas. There will be no more failed calls with your iPhone 4 and no more annoyance over missing an important message due to poor signal strength. There could even be high bandwidth connections with cars, with the mix integrated in the white lines of the highway.

This pushes our ‘connectedness’ a whole lot further. Even when we decide to flee from social pressure to the forest (or any other remote place), we are still connected. Instead of being limited by technology, we are now limited by our conscience and our perseverance.

Via IEEE

Hermit Crabs Can Live Like Kings Again

As global houses shortages are on the rise, hermit crabs are impacted too. Hermit crabs do not make their own homes, but must scavenge for shells. The shell supply is decreasing and therefore they often end up using glass bottles or empty shotgun shells. This housing is not up to modern standards, let alone health and safety regulations. Project Shellter wants to save these beatniks and provide them with quality housing so they can live like kings again.

A collaborating between Makerbot and TeamTeamUsa is using 3D printers to produce new biodegradable shells. They are tested in the ‘crabitat’ to see whether or not the crabs adapt to their new housing. All shell designs are crowd sourced, so if you have some 3D modeling skills and a good idea, you can contribute by uploading your own design.

Via Crisp Green and Project Shellter

The future of Assisted Living

Arjen Born, a Dutch Photographer, envisions the future of assisted living through hilarious and moving photographs.

Photography often reside in the realm of the nostalgic past, but Arjen dares to look forward. He does not question if robots will assist us in our daily life, he questions how robots will do this.

Via GUP

Traditional Thanksgiving Meat

Greenridge Farm offers this pork molded in the shape of a piglet. But if you are more the traditional type of person, Greenrdige Farms also offer Turkey-breasts in the shape of an actual turkey. Perfect for a traditional Thanksgiving!

Will this pseudo-pig actually taste better in the shape of a piglet? Or does the shape reminds us too much of Babe, and becomes cruel to roast? At least it is a good marketing trick to distract you from what the piglet is actually made of.

Via Consumerist

Social Microbial life

MyMicrobes, interestingly dubbed “Fecesbook” by ABC News, is the new social network for your gastrointestinal bacteria. For only $2,100 and a bit of poo you can become a member of this ingenious network which connects you to like minded people through your own gut bacteria.

Peer Bork, a biochemist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, created this network after receiving 50 to 100 emails from people having troubles with their stomach or having diarrhea. It might look strange to connect people based on their microbiomes, but researchers think it will help people with similar digestive profiles to share and gather information about their digestive health. In the meanwhile they hope to gather data which could help to guide treatments for various diseases.

Imagine telling your children you met your wife because you both had the same bowel problems.

Via ABC News and PopSci

Sin free for just €1.59

For just £1.19 ($1.99, €1,59) you can download an app for your iPhone which offers tips and guidelines with the sacrament, “the perfect aid for every penitent” as the description reads. This, on itself, is not so special. There are dozen of apps which help you to confess, though this is the first which is officially approved by the Catholic Church.

The app allows users to keep track of their sins, and guides them through the sacrament (where Catholics admit their wrongdoing through).  The app is launched shortly after Pope Benedict XVI gave the advice to embrace digital communication. Although he adds: “It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives.”

Hopefully there will be a ‘Pocket Pope’ app in the near future.

Via BBC News, iTunes

Deus Ex: The EyeBorg Documentary

Back in 2009 Rob Spence, a cyborg film maker, worked together with a team of ocularists, inventors, engineering specialists on a prosthetic eye which can capture and stream video. He then started the project: EyeBorg.

Commissioned by the makers of ‘Deus Ex: Human Revolution‘, a game which tells the story of the year 2027 where cyborgs are the norm, he needed to figure out how far we currently are from that future. In his 12 minute documentary he meets leading scientists in biotechnology and fellow cyborgs. It shows we are not far from a future where cyborgs are the norm.

Rob says: “People are going to have the option of having superior arms, superior eyes at some point. People say no one would ever cut off their own arm and replace it, but if the technology gets there – and it looks like it will – people will think about it. They might be early adopters.”

Via EyeBorg - Sky News

Tattoo 2.0

As a child you probably had one of those temporary tattoos that come packed with over-sweetened chewing gum. It was a nice decoration, and a way to stand out. Recently researchers have brought temporary tattoos to the next level with small, flexible electronic circuits.

These electronic patches consist of tiny semiconductor circuits, and are able to stretch with the skin. Scientists from the University of Illinois have created demonstration versions of these “tattoos” using a diverse array of electronic components mounted on a thin, rubbery substrate. Possible applications include sensors, LEDs, transistors, radio frequency capacitors, wireless antennas, and conductive coils and solar cells for power.The patches are mounted on a thin sheet of water-soluble plastic and then laminated to the skin with water, just like a temporary tattoo. The circuits can also be applied directly to a temporary tattoo, hiding the appearance of the electronics.

This is an important advancement in wearable electronics. Such patches could allow us to measure brainwaves and other mental activity in an everyday setting.  Currently this is only possible in a lab with a complicated helmet and a lot of wires. Imagine what else might be possible. In the near future we may be able to exchange contact information through a handshake, or finally find that mysterious six sense.

Via Physorg

Glowing Glucose

Maybe you still remember the tattoo which helps to monitor a diabetic’s glucose level. A permanent solution. Now Japanese scientists from the University of Tokyo created a new way for diabetics to monitor their levels.

Instead of putting needles in your body, either to measure your levels or to get the special tattoo, you can also get a special 1mm glowstick inserted underneath your skin. This glowstick will glow whenever your glucose levels will increase. This hydrogel fiber is considered more accurate and stable than its predecessors. It even does not require oxygen and will work for 140 days (in mice that is).

Parties with a diabetic will never be the same.

Via Engadget

Streetlight Trees

We all know the cellphone masts disguised as trees, created in an attempt to blend technology within the ‘natural’ landscape. Now Taiwanese scientists have created trees that could function as streetlights. They infused the leaves of Bacopa Caroliniana with gold nanoparticles which causes the chlorophyll to produce a reddish luminescence. This phenomenon is awkwardly named bio-LED by the scientists.

According to Yen Hsun Su of the Academia Sinicia and the National Cheng Kun Univerisity: ‘The bio-LED could be used to make roadside trees luminescent at night. This will save energy and absorb CO2 as the bio-LED luminescence will cause the chloroplast to conduct photosynthesis,’ This means that while the tree is ‘lit’ more CO2 is consumed from the atmosphere, therefore the glowing trees could reduce carbon emission, cut electricity costs while still lighting streets safely.

Photo courtesy of MrHayata. Via PopSci via Inhabitat.

Virtual Offline Shopping

As the second most hardest working people on this planet, Koreans obviously dread their weekly shopping for groceries. It is therefore that Home Plus (Tesco in Europe) plastered walls of a Korean subway station with virtual shelves, allowing Koreans to shop with their smart phones while waiting on the metro.

Each product has QR code which will place the product in an online shopping cart on your smart phone. When the transaction is completed the products will be delivered to the shopper’s home within the day.

The concept makes effectively use of the commuters’ waiting time, while combining the efficiency of online shopping with the rich context of offline shopping. In this way bus stops could be transformed in small AH To Go’s and train stations into shopping malls.

Via Gizmodo, Via Design Boom

Live a happy life!

Remember the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where Jim Carrey removes his memories of a relationship with Kate Winslet? According to researchers at the University of Montreal, it is now possible to reduce the brain’s ability to record negative emotions using the drug metyrapone. Just like in the movie, metyrapone blocks the brain from recalling bad memories.

Metyrapone is not a new drug. It is often used to diagnose adrenal insufficiency, but researchers have now discovered its effect on the stress hormone cortisol. Metyrapone decreases the levels of cortisol at the time of a stressful event. Decreasing these levels, as trials suggest, impairs the formation of memories of that event. These tests are in their early stage, but show serious promise. Can we still cherish our happy memories if we do not have any negative ones?

Via Pyschcentral

Death: An in your Face type of Business

Everyone wants to be remembered after his or her death. Some choose to be buried, others to be cremated. The company Cremation Solutions has a new service which ensures you will be remembered by your loved ones.

Cremation Solution creates personalized urns, in the form of the head of the person who passed away. That’s right, an urn in the shape of a human head. With just two photographs they are able to reconstruct the face in great detail with the latest 3D printing technology. They even come with hair, although this is an option. At just $2,600 you can get your own head turned into a urn. Get them while them hot, it is better to be safe then sorry!

Cremation Solutions via Gearfuse

The Human LED screen

All living creates produce light by default, so do humans. Now researchers from US, China, Korea and Singapore collaborated have collaborated in order to create ultra-thin flexible LED sheets which can be implemented underneath the human skin allowing for medical monitoring and other biomedical applications.

The flexible ultra-thin LED sheets are arrays of 0.5 μm thick and 100 x 100 μm square, much smaller then current commercially arrays. It is first printed on a rigid glass substrate and then transferred to an inexpensive biocompatible polymer. Researches successfully tested these small and flexible LED arrays on the fingertip of a glove while immersing it in water, they also implemented it underneath the skin of an animal model.

How long before we see humans walking with commercials on their forehead implemented LED screens?

Our Heart as a Power Plant

Nanowire generators could one day lead to medical devices powered by the patient’s own heart. A tiny, nearly invisible nanowire can convert the energy of pulsing, flexing muscles inside a rat’s body into electric current, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have shown.

Zhong Lin Wang and his research group attached special designed nano wires to a rats diaphragm and heart. When the rat breathes and its heart beats they could respective generate about four pico-amps of current at two millivolts and 30 pico-amps at about three millivolts. Although this amount of current is extremely low (a pico-amp is a million millionth of an amp), it holds many promises for powering nano sized devices. Wang’s team is now looking at combining multiple nano wires to harvest more energy.

The nano wire is made of zinc oxide and placed on a flexible polymer. By encapsulating it with another polymer the nano wire is protected from bodily fluids. The wires generate energy under mechanical stress, which is called the piezoelectric effect. Wang’s team has now proven this could effect could also work inside the body of a living being.

Perhaps someday we could charge our mobile by our own heart power?

Full paper: Advanced Materials, via: Techreview.

Nano Tattoo to Monitor Diabetes

Now here is something for the NANO Supermarket: Massachusetts-based Draper Laboratories have developed a special injectable ink with nano–particles. This ink eventually could replace painful blood glucose tests which diabetics need to do on a regular basis.

Squishy nano spheres, embedded in the ink, consist of three different parts: a glucose detecting molecule, a color changing dye and a glucose mimicking molecule. Those three parts continuously move around in the sphere, approaching the surface the glucose detecting molecule either latches onto the mimicking glucose molecule or a glucose molecule making the color of the sphere change either to yellow or orange. The sampling process repeats itself every few milliseconds and is therefore much faster then most current blood testing systems.

Will the next step be to let our skin tell when we’re irritated or happy?

Via Discovery.